Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday May 29, 2014 @08:59PM
from the pyramid-power dept.

LoLobey (1932986) writes "Scott Adams has proposed a pyramid project
to save the world via energy generation and tourism. Basically build giant
pyramids, miles wide and high, in the desert to generate power via chimney
effect and photo voltaics with added features for
tourism (he's planning ahead for when robots take over all the work and we'll
need something to do). He's had a few "Big Ideas" lately (canals, ice bergs, ion energy)."

And he posts under pseudonyms as his own biggest fan. He's probably the GGP.

The suggestion that he's been right at some point when telling the engineers of the world that they're doing it wrong is laughable. The guy's got no sense of reality. Perpetual motion refutes consistently observed properties of the universe. Engineers know this.

When someone objects because it's "obvious" that means they object but don't understand why. Are you asserting there are no ions in the air? Or that they can't be collected as described? Or that the process requires more energy input than extracted? Or some other complaint?

"It sounds stupid because I don't understand" is not the most effective argument.

When did I tell engineers they are doing it wrong? I would remember that. P
The most common criticism I get is from people criticizing their own hallucination of what I did. Several examples here.
Hey, did an engineer just tell me I'm writing wrong?
Sometimes Slashdot is like Jezebel with math.

Anyone can be an effective visionary if they have an analytical mind and aren't stuck in the mental rut of dogma. Authors, including authors of cartoons, tend to spend most of their time thinking, so they're a fairly good profession for spawning visionaries quite regularly.

Engineers make things, and they're very practical and pragmatic about it --- they make things that actually work, and as such they're the creators of everything technical in the modern world. Having both feet well anchored on the ground is almost the opposite of thinking about the distant future though --- if they do become visionaries, it's not so much a result of their profession but because they also enjoy pure science and futurism.

I'm an engineer, but I wouldn't poo poo Scott Adams just because he's not. If he (or anyone else) comes up with some interesting designs, I'm sure that many skilled engineers and scientists will sanity check them before the detailed design begins.

the sad part is there is a huge market for pv and concentrated solar thermal, and we don't need to build pyramids to do it.'solar roadways' are far fetched yet they exist and we can turn broken beer bottles into them. but more interesting is a omnidirectional solar concentrator that channels all the solar and moon light with a magnification of up to 10,000 times the concentartion of available light. which then makes solar thermal and solar photovotaics that run in moon light and on cloudy days.in fact there

In my opinion concentrated solar will continue to lose out, it's raison d'etre is the high price of PV cells... but the concentrators themselves are never cheap, generally require tracking and can't efficiently handle diffuse light.

There's no value in being a visionary. Most people have a thousand and one save-the-world ideas before breakfast; what matters is figuring out which ones actually work and dismissing the ones that don't, something Adams has shown no particular aptitude for. Nikola Tesla may be remembered for a bunch of fantastical ideas that never came to pass, but he's respected for the ideas he pulled off.

Intelligent, informed speculation has a place and purpose. I remember Larry Niven's essay, "Bigger than Worlds" in this respect. He goes off into some metaphorical and literal deep-space territory here, but he's trying to constrain speculation in terms of the laws of physics. How would we build artificial worlds? He discusses Dyson spheres but can't figure out where the gravity comes from, so comes up with a compromise where you have a ring the diameter of Earth's orbit and spin it. This lead to the novel R

I'm an engineer, but I wouldn't poo poo Scott Adams just because he's not. If he (or anyone else) comes up with some interesting designs, I'm sure that many skilled engineers and scientists will sanity check them before the detailed design begins

As a Professional Electrical Engineer I have always enjoyed Scott Adams Dilbert cartoons and looking at his education he is no layman having attended Hartwick College and the University of California, Berkeley where he received an MBA in economics and management.

While his proposal seem to be the stuff of Sci-Fi the principles are valid although I personally doubt with our current technology that it would feasible in our lifetime and taking a few pages out of his Dilbert books the amount of management (incl

Bono was instrumental in pusuading Clinton to clamp down on IRA funding coming from Boston, which eventually lead to the downfall of the IRA and the start of the peace process. Bono (and Geldof) also managed to get the crippling cold war debt that was foisted onto Africa written off the books, a clean slate for billions of impovrished people. When you start accomplishing selfless good deeds of that magnitude maybe people will listen to you too.

He also worked with George Bush on African AIDS relief. Don't make the same mistake the Hollywood idiots make of lumping people together because of their professions or geographical locations. I wouldn't put him in the same truck with Depp, or Paltrow. Bono actively works for the causes he believes in and has shown a williness to work with people across the political spectrum to actually get things done. How influential is he? More so than your self-indulgent average west coast Hollywood liberal.

Rainwater can be collected and recycled fairly easily. Crops of hydroponic vegetable gardens can be grown using robots. One level could be set aside for chicken and cows. Wind power can be generated on the top levels. A few levels can be set aside for humans. I would think that making the base with steel and upper levels with aluminum beams would be the most practical. It would have the best balconies ever! I can't wait to move in!!

Rainwater can be collected and recycled fairly easily. Crops of hydroponic vegetable gardens can be grown using robots. One level could be set aside for chicken and cows. Wind power can be generated on the top levels. A few levels can be set aside for humans. I would think that making the base with steel and upper levels with aluminum beams would be the most practical. It would have the best balconies ever! I can't wait to move in!!

If you started of with the center of many modern large cities with skyscrapers, you already have the support structure for a massive hollow pyramid in place. Of course, few of those cities happen to be in hot deserts.

Let's math:
Assuming that the miles high pyramid uses free sun power to melt sand and we only need PV to power lifting the glass blocks
The great pyramid of giza is 455' tall and has 10^12 joules of potential energy (http://what-if.xkcd.com/95/)
A 2 mile high pyramid with the same dimensions is about 12x taller
if you scale up the pyramid by 12, that's 12^4x more energy (using this formula: http://www.physicsforums.com/s... [physicsforums.com])
12^4*10^12 joules=2e16 joules = 5e9 kWh
wholesale price of electricity is 5 cents

Assuming that the miles high pyramid uses free sun power to melt sand and we only need PV to power lifting the glass blocks

The great pyramid of giza is 455' tall and has 10^12 joules of potential energy (http://what-if.xkcd.com/95/)A 2 mile high pyramid with the same dimensions is about 12x tallerIf you scale up the pyramid by 12, that's 12^4x more energy (http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=428636)12^4*10^12 joules=2e16 joules = 5e9 kWhWholesale price of electricity is 5 cents per kWh5e9 kWh *.05 dollars/kWh = 250,000,000 dollars

This could easily triple depending on motor losses and other energy costs. So you could make your giant pyramid with "free" energy or you could sell the energy on the open market for almost a billion dollars

The issue I see is not "Lifting the blocks is energy expensive, therefor wont work!", the issue I see is "Clearing the sand down to bedrock is expensive, and therefor wont work!"

Here's the deal:

Sand grains in the desert are small, and are carried by wind. Wind is powered by solar induced thermal exchanges. Wind energy routinely creates and moves humongous piles of sand around, and the formation of those piles of sand can be controlled by building or placing obstacles to redirect wind flow/speed/pressure. A nearly entirely passive process can be used to deposit the sand, even up on top of the pyramid while it is being built. The only thing you need to lift manually is the sintering system.

However, by the same token, you MUST place the pyramid directly on bedrock to avoid having the sand get blown out from under the pyramid by said wind patterns.(Unless you WANT your pyramid to break in half!) Clearing out several feet of sand is a non-trivial task that is energy intensive. Getting the wind to do this for you is not very feasible.

Once the pyramids(s) is (are) made however, you will have the undesirable consequence of their being made from glass, in an erosive sand environment featuring wind. Glass is substantively "softer" on the mohs hardness scale than is raw crystalline silicon dioxide-- the primary component of sand. The pyramid will get abraded HARD, and will require very aggressive maintenance.

The lighthouse of Alexandria was build with bricks made of GLASS.It lasted over 1000 years, survived several earthquakes (needed repairs ofc) and was in operation as a lighthouse nearly 600 years long. Untill the top of it was finally converted into a mosque.I would wager using glass for a modern pyramid is the least of the concerns.

The Giza pyramids are solid structures with a few tunnels and rooms. The power generation pyramid idea would use a hollow pyramid, so you could be talking about something that weighs the same or less, even though it is so much larger.

The concept is nothing new, and in fact there are active and semi - active attempts at building some or at least exploring some elements of them. Notable (per Wikipedia) are Masdar City near Abu Dhabi, many Las Vegas hotels, and Arcosanti in Arizona.

A steel-frame pyramid in a desert has three advantages over a mountain. First, the chimney effect is better when there's more air heated. Second, it gets hot in deserts and there's a lot of sun, vs. snow-covered and cloud-draped mountains. Third, heavy precipitation and forests don't cover deserts and serve the surrounding areas with abundant water and oxygen.

Both are correct, although s' seems favored over s's, either one can be used and be considered correct. This particular rule is one that is of style, not grammar, which might be surprising. The only rule suggested in style manuals is that you remain consistent and stick with one or the other in whatever you're writing.

You do realise when you post these inane remarks using such words people don't think "oh, I should research what's happening in the Muslim world", they think "this guy needs some professional help; his world is tiny and cold, and he's scared of people who look different, and lacks the ability to ascertain what's happening in the world at even a very basic level"? In short, the only person you are hurting with your comments is yourself.

people don't think "oh, I should research what's happening in the Muslim world"

The public knows exactly what OP is referring to, no need to go do research. This isn't 1989.

they think "this guy needs some professional help

You're giving too much weight to the comment. When most people read something like that, they think "Heh, +1 sad but true" and move on. Even if someone dedicated their lives to posting anti-Muslim comments, most people would only see one of them, ever, and would not conclude "This guy needs professional help!"

Didn't ideas like this used to be really popular in the 90's? Where everyone was trying to design buildings, sometimes called archologies, that could serve all of life's needs in a sustainable way. Technically, I think Adams was talking about more of a utility plant, but for a structure of this size, why not make it a fully sustainable community? Extract water from the air, build some green houses, and then you don't even need robots, you've got people to do the maintenance. Frank Herbert would probabl

My scheme was to use convict labor to build great pyramids by hand. Escape would not be likely as the desert spots would be way to far from the first water holes. Give convicts a credit for each good work day put in. That way instead of a ten year sentence we could give a 3,000 work day sentence. If the convict chooses not to work diligently he auto converts his sentence to permanent imprisonment. A few years of hard manual labor in the sun will tame almost anyone.